The Biscuit Joiner Handbook - Softcover

Be careful that this title doesn't get in with the cookbooks; the biscuits in question are made of pressed wood, not flour, and will surely give your patrons indigestion! Biscuits are used much like dowels to hold projects together; a biscuit joiner is a tool that cuts the slots for them. Biscuits have been popular in Europe for years but are a recent arrival in most U.S. workshops. Foster provides a wealth of information about the use of this tool. However, fully half the book is devoted to in-depth descriptions of particular models of tools and accessories, and the majority of readers will be bored by such excess. Biscuit joiners are, comparatively speaking, an easy tool to operate, so most collections do not need this book. Only comprehensive collections need consider.
- Jonathan Hershey, Akron-Summit Cty. P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Woodworkers have for years used such traditional methods of joining two pieces of wood as dovetail and finger joint, but biscuit joinery is a method that's not only faster but maybe stronger. What Foster accomplishes here is a complete rundown of the when, how, where, and how much aspects of the method. Although a book like this tends toward overkill (after all, showing the many models of biscuit joiners comes to seem like advertising for them), there's enough information in it to convince most woodworkers who now turn their noses up at this newfangled technology that there just might be something to it. Meanwhile, once those who work wood for profit notice that they can crank out, say, a bookcase in half the time by using biscuits, they will become biscuit joiner devotees. Jon Kartman